whales-msg - 1/10/02
Hunting and use of whales in period.
NOTE: See also the files: fish-msg, Shrympes-art, Iceland-msg, Basques-msg,
fishing-msg, cooking-oils-msg, ships-msg, eels-msg, seafood-msg, bone-msg,
ivory-msg, ivory-bib.
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NOTICE -
This file is a collection of various messages having a common theme that I have
collected from my reading of the various computer networks. Some messages date
back to 1989, some may be as recent as yesterday.
This file is part of a collection of files called Stefan's Florilegium. These
files are available on the Internet at: http://www.florilegium.org
I have done a limited amount of editing. Messages having to do with
separate topics were sometimes split into different files and sometimes
extraneous information was removed. For instance, the message IDs were removed
to save space and remove clutter.
The comments made in these messages are not necessarily my viewpoints. I make
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Please respect the time and efforts of those who have written these
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If information is published from these messages, please give credit to the
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Thank you,
Mark S. Harris AKA: THLord Stefan li Rous
Stefan at florilegium.org
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From: "Nanna Rognvaldardottir"
To:
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Sperm Whales
Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2001 17:45:18 -0000
Stefan wrote:
> There is evidence of whales being hunted and eated in period. Do we
> have any idea when the sperm whales were first hunted for this
> spermaceti? Or perhaps in period these whales were considered edible
> and were hunted for food as well as for this oil?
The Basques were hunting whales for their oil from the 14th century
onwards - not sure about sperm whales, though, but by the 16th century they
had developed a technique for rendering whale blubber into oil aboard ship,
eliminating the need for a land base, so they could go on whaling trips for
many months at a time. They were hunting whales around Iceland and
Newfoundland at that time.
As to the edibility of sperm whales - well, I come from a whale-eating
nation and everyone agrees that sperm whale meat is indigestible, I think
mostly because it is so fatty - permetrated with whale oil, so to speak.
Tastes awful and very hard to keep down. Or inside, at least. Meat from
beached sperm whales may have been eaten during famines in earlier times - I
remember a story about a 19th century farmer who got some sperm whale meat
and cooked it and had his least favorite son eat some of it because he
didn't want to risk one of his dogs.
> How were whales hunted in period? I guess going after them in a longship
> type vessel isn't any more hair-raising than in a whaleboat, but not
> something I would willingly do.
Around here, the smaller whales, like minke and pilot whales, were sometimes
caught in nets or driven to the shore and stabbed. But most of the whalemeat
that was eaten came from large whales that had beached themselves.
Nanna
(and in case anyone wants to know, no, I don't eat whale meat. Not minke
whale, at least. Not any more. Got an overdose of it during my university
years, when it was practically the only meat I could afford. Whalemeat two
or three days a week and guillemot or puffin on Sundays.)
From: "Decker, Terry D."
To: "'sca-cooks at ansteorra.org'"
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Sperm Whales
Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2001 14:45:08 -0500
According to my notes:
There is archeological evidence of prehistoric Northern European whaling
activity.
Small whales were hunted in northern waters during the Middle Ages. The
modern pilot whale drives of the Faroe Islanders is one of the last remnants
of the Medieval practice.
Reference: Bloch, D. 1996. Whaling in the Faroe Islands, 1584-1994: An
Overview. Pp. 49-61 In: P. Holm, D.J. Starkey and J.Th. Th=DBr (eds) The North
Atlantic Fisheries, 1100-1976 - National Perspectives on a Common Resource.
Studia Atlantica, 1.
It should be noted that the Aleut and Inuit hunt small whales from umiaks.
It is a traditional practice probably with prehistoric origins.
The Basques were whaling at Red Bay, Labrador around 1560 (1540?) and there
were about a dozen whaling ports along the coast. According to Basque
tradition, there was a whaling station in Newfoundland around 1372.
(Archeology 46:5, National Geographic July 1985, 1999 Conference of the
Association for the History of the Northern Seas)
http://www.swgc.mun.ca/ahns/
http://www.swgc.mun.ca/ahns/AHNS99.html
An excavation of Erik the Red's farm in Greenland produced the ruins of a
cowbarn unearthed a whale scapula being used as a stall divider. The last
occupancy was estimated to be around 1350.
http://www.archaeology.org/online/features/greenland/index.html
"And if on a fish day or in Lent there be whale-flesh (craspois), you ought
to use it as you use bacon on a meat day." Le Menagier de Paris
Menagier suggests slicing whale raw and cooking it in water "like bacon" and
serving it with peas.
Whaling from Hull begins in 1594. --
http://www.hullcc.gov.uk/hull_tapestry/shipping.html
Bear
Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2001 22:02:45 +0200
From: Volker Bach
To: sca-cooks at ansteorra.org
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Sperm Whales
"Mark.S Harris" schrieb:
> How were whales hunted in period? I guess going after them in a longship
> type vessel isn't any more hair-raising than in a whaleboat, but not
> something I would willingly do. (actually, for more reasons than the
> just the hazard). Perhaps the whales were more common, and came in closer
> to shore such that you didn't need a large ship to act as a home base.
To my knowledge, whaling was mostly done inshore
in period. Whales frequently approach coasts even
today (in remoter places where they weren't killed
and eaten or turned into lighting on sight). In
the Faroes and northern Norway you could still get
at them with boats, and Native Americans on the
Pacific coast actually still hunt them that way
AFAIK. Also, whaling was not really the industry
it would become in the 1600s. I know for a fact
that whaling the Moby Dick way was done in the
mid-17th century, but I'm not sure how far back
the tradition goes.
Giano
Edited by Mark S. Harris whales-msg 3